Computational Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics

I'm happy to announce that our paper led by NOVA VIA Postdoc Hector Olivares was just featured on science alert.

In the study, we conducted GRMHD simulations of accretion onto condensations of light bosons called Boson stars. While Boson stars show little interaction with ordinary matter except for their gravitational pull, they do bend the light similar to a black hole. We find that, depending on the compactness (the ratio of mass to radius), some Boson stars also give rise to empty interiors, mimicking the shadow observed by the EHT. In our models however, the shadow turned out too small to account for the EHT observations of M87.

See the MNRAS paper for all the details!

Update: for a nice summary, see the following YouTube video by Anton Petrov.